It's not uncommon to see people use "cargo culting" to refer to doing something without knowing (or being aware of) why. It's not exactly right but it's not exactly wrong either, it's simply attaching a broader meaning to what used to be a more narrow term. Happens all the time.
"Cargo-culting" has been redefined and repurposed many, many times for different domains (science, programming, software engineering, etc). It's the closest term I know of to name the process I describe, so that's what I used. As you can see from the post, I'm aware of the semantic and etymological difficulty. If you have a better term you'd like to suggest, I'm all ears; having it won't make the process I describe "more wrong" though.
To use your characterization, the database index example is where someone has an expectation that adding indexes are a valid reflexive response to slow querying.
Of course the post goes back to navel-gazing in the end. It started out with a tweet, so I'm not sure why you'd expect anything less. In any case, I hope the space in between proves useful or thought-provoking to some.
It would be interesting to find out why a large number of people upvoted a blog post about a simple harmless misunderstanding. Was it the phrase "cargo cult"? Feynman wrote about the same thing in science : http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf
I've always thought the idea was linked to the concept of the Outside Context Problem, as a temporary case (the US service personnel eventually left, giving rise to the cult). Iain Banks purportedly coined this term and uses this as the basis of his novel Excession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_Context_Problem#Outsid...
Amusingly, Banks also had a ship named Cargo Cult in another Culture novel (The Player of Games).
For those interested in the original origin of the phrase "cargo cult," during WWII a bunch of American soldiers landed in a small island chain in the Pacific called Melanesia. They showed up out of nowhere with huge ships and planes, brought a bunch of food, vehicles and contraptions, looked and spoke completely differently than the inhabitants had hardly seen in such numbers. The GIs shared their food, gave little gifts to the natives, and then abruptly left.
The locals then built altars (such as the straw plane in the OP) in the hopes of luring back the "visiters from another place" and ushering in another era of abundance. They became a "Cargo Cult."
And it's hard to blame them. That must have been an absolutely worldview shattering experience.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] thread> By “cargo-culting”, I was generally referring to doing something without properly knowing why it might be good or bad.
That is not what cargo culting is.
Cargo culting is creating an expectation ("If A, then B") based on inaccurate or incomplete observations.
You then go on to list examples, of which two are cargo cult. The database indexes one is just stupid.
You're trying to redefine cargo cult to make yourself seem less wrong, and in the end you go back to navel-gazing.
To use your characterization, the database index example is where someone has an expectation that adding indexes are a valid reflexive response to slow querying.
Of course the post goes back to navel-gazing in the end. It started out with a tweet, so I'm not sure why you'd expect anything less. In any case, I hope the space in between proves useful or thought-provoking to some.
Cargo culting, since the very beginning, is the mimicry by a poseur of someone doing the mimicked action in order to produce similar results.
There is no semantic or etymological difficulty. The process you describe has nothing to do with cargo cult.
It is worth reading the wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
I've always thought the idea was linked to the concept of the Outside Context Problem, as a temporary case (the US service personnel eventually left, giving rise to the cult). Iain Banks purportedly coined this term and uses this as the basis of his novel Excession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_Context_Problem#Outsid...
Amusingly, Banks also had a ship named Cargo Cult in another Culture novel (The Player of Games).
The locals then built altars (such as the straw plane in the OP) in the hopes of luring back the "visiters from another place" and ushering in another era of abundance. They became a "Cargo Cult."
And it's hard to blame them. That must have been an absolutely worldview shattering experience.